Bacon Apple Pie

Jane sent along another bit of bacon - a photo of Bacon Apple Pie from Flickr. 

I can imagine it being pretty tasty, but you never know until you try, eh?

Bacon and Banana Pepper flatbread pizza

I'm currently visiting my folks in DC, and last night, we hit the Kennedy Center to see the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in action (conclusion: very modern. Maybe a little too modern.). We decided to grab dinner at the Kennedy Center cafeteria, which is probably the poshest cafeteria ever. And it was there that I first experienced bacon on pizza.

I'm not generally wild about flatbread pizza (Chicago deep dish all the way baby), but this was pretty effin' tasty. The combination of bacon and banana peppers was genius, and nicely offset with some parmesan (the menu claimed it was mozzarella, but I really don't think so). All in all, a tasty flavor experience, and one I intend to repeat and tinker with in my own kitchen sometime.

Bacon Cheese Roll

This kind of blows my mind.

It's so simple, so elegant... and my god, I'll bet it tastes amazing. 

(thanks to Jane for passing it on)

Chicken, Bacon, Wine

I've long been into the idea of trying to make coque au vin sometime, but it requires... effort. So, that time has not yet come. But I did end up making this chicken dinner that was vaguely in the spirit of coque au vin, in the sense that it involved chicken, bacon, and wine. So it was about as similar to the original as, shall we say, Thumper is to Pepe le Pew. But hey, it was ridiculously simple to make, and very tasty. Especially for something that was basically thrown together from what I had around the kitchen.

It's not the prettiest dinner I've ever made, I know.

One needs:

5 strips bacon

Chicken - I had a bunch of tenderloins, but a breast or two would work too?

2 onions

1 cup red wine  (I used the rest of the TJ's zin)

1 cup chicken broth

3 cloves garlic

thyme, oregano, rosemary, salt, pepper

In a large pan that'll hold a cup or two of liquid, fry the bacon. As it cooks, chop up the onion. When the bacon is almost done, pull it out, leaving the grease (of course), and throw in the onion and chicken. Brown the chicken on all sides. As it cooks, crush in the garlic, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Once it's well browned, crumble the bacon into it, and add the wine, chicken broth, and herbs - I added just a bit of rosemary, a shake of oregano, and a hefty shake of thyme. Cover and saute over medium-low heat for approximately 20 minutes, or until the chicken is wholly cooked and most of the liquid has reduced. 

I completed it by cooking some egg noodles and throwing them in at the end, but potatoes could work too. Coque au vin it ain't, but it's pretty good anyhow.

Asparagus with Bacon Vinaigrette

This was quite possibly the most fantastic dinner I have ever made for myself.

On the way home today I stopped off at the store and bought myself a 1.3 pound steak. Because I'm worth it. To do it justice, I decided to try something I've been intrigued by for awhile, namely, a bacon vinaigrette - I figured it'd be gorgeous on asparagus. How very right I was. Combined with a glass of Trader Joe's Reserve 2006 Sonoma County Zinfandel, it's nothing short of bliss. And took a mere 10 minutes to make!

One needs:

a big ol' steak

1/2 bunch of asparagus (I tried the frozen kind for the first time - not as good as fresh, to be sure, but really not bad!)

3 strips of bacon

1 shallot

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon water

garlic salt

lemon pepper

some olive oil

butter

Open the wine and pour yourself a glass.

Preheat the oven to 450. Chop the bacon up fine and fry it. Lay the asparagus out on a baking sheet and drizzle the newly acquired bacon grease over it, reserving the bacon. Stick the asparagus in the oven. As it roasts (approximately 8 minutes), chop the shallot, add it and a splash of olive oil to the bacon. Saute over low heat for a minute or so, then add the vinegar, water, salt and pepper, and stir.  

Next, sprinkle salt and pepper over your steak. Melt some butter (and, for a real treat, a spoon or two of bacon grease) in a pan. Sear the steak on both sides, and lay it on a plate. 

Pull the asparagus out of the oven, toss with the vinaigrette, add to your plate. Briefly set aside.

Cut a thick slice of good bread and use it to mop up the drippings in the steak pan as an appetizer. 

Set your glass and plate down on the table. Give yourself a round of applause for preparing such a tremendous meal. Eat, savoring every wonderful bite. Cut another thick slice of bread and clean off your plate. Lean back, take a sip of wine, and light yourself a cigarette. Could life be any better?

The Maple Bacon Cupcake

So I'm hanging out on my man's couch the other night and he suddenly says "Oh yeah! I have something for you!" and whips out a big box. Inside this box was a cupcake. Resting on top of this cupcake were a few specks of bacon. omg.

I love bacon, but I really love cupcakes. Me and cupcakes go way back. One of the requirements at my superhippy preschool was that each child's parents had to bring in food for all the kids (once a year? I dunno). My parents, not being versed in the ways of American hippies, bought a crapload of Hostess chocolate cupcakes. So first off, vegans are not down with chocolate cupcakes. Second off, nobody in charge of a preschool is into the idea of feeding a herd of 3 year olds a bunch of sugary chocolate goodness right before naptime. So the offering was denied, and I had to eat them all by myself. Years later, when I was in elementary school, it was expected of parents to bring in the treat for their child's birthday. So my mom and I made chocolate cupcakes. By some strange calculation, we made about 80 of them. So I spent the next week eating pretty much nothing else. Oh, what bliss it was. Long story short, I love cupcakes, and I've eaten an awful lot of 'em in my day.

It's not a preference, it's a passion.

Uh... anyways. 

Chicago has been participating happily in the cupcake craze sweeping the nation - there are not at least 3 places that do nothing but cupcakes - but honestly, I haven't really looked into it. Partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm poor, and partly because buying cupcakes is so much less pleasing to me than eating homemade ones at parties and such. So I had not actually been to More Cupcakes (1 E Delaware Place, between State and Wabash, Chicago, IL 60611). Their website is basically a long obnoxious ad (have you ever wanted... more?) and gives you absolutely no information, so I don't see the point in linking to it. But apparently they have a lot of bacon options - I hear tell of a BLT cupcake. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but hey, I'm open to the possibility that it could be tasty.

Anyhow, Tone got me a bacon maple cupcake.

So, first off, while I am a great lover of cupcakes, I have to say, this whole 1/2 inch thick pile of frosting on top is just not comme il faut. It's a common thing to see, particularly in the fancy pants yuppy cupcakes so popular these days, because the frosting is where you get to show off a bit, and cupcakes don't have a lot of surface area, so you've gotta go with volume. But the problem with that is, when you stack it so high, it's no longer possible to take a bite of the cupcake from top to bottom, so you basically end up eating the frosting and then the cake. Now, some people like to lick off all the frosting first, and that's fine, but here, the task is a bit arduous. That's a lot of frosting, son. And it's super rich. It's hard work - and this is coming from a person who enjoys eating bowls of whipped cream. Anyhow, point being, boo on the frosting to cake ratio (though I should note, mounds of frosting doesn't necessarily disqualify a cupcake from greatness in my mind. CakeLove packs a pretty massive amount of frosting onto their cupcakes, and they're still amazing. But then, everything at CakeLove is amazing.).

That said, the frosting was delicious. Buttery maple goodness - very nice, even if it was a bit overwhelming.

The cake part, on the other hand, was a bit of a let-down. Props for the fact that it's riddled with bacon. It's like chips ahoy! betcha get a chip in every bite, except with pork. But first off, the bacon is not so amazing. It's super salty and kinda chewy and tastes strangely artificial. Secondly, the cake itself is just not suited to it. It's sweet and salty and tastes vaguely of cornmeal, but not really in a good way. It tastes indecisive rather than complex - as though the creator couldn't really decide what kind of flavor s/he was going for a just kinda mishmashed a bunch of em. Sweet? Salty? Savoury? Meh, why not a little of everything.

Ultimately, kind of a disappointment. Maybe I'll give one of More Cupcakes' more traditional offerings a try someday, perhaps they're better with the basics.

Coddle

Another fabulous concoction from Maura Laverty's Feasting Galore (see also: Haggerty), this is apparently a traditional Saturday night supper, and is guaranteed to prevent a hangover. I scaled it down from the original recipe (my version serves one hungry me), which called for a pound of bacon and half a pound of pork sausages, and I omitted the tablespoon of parsley because I didn't have any (and pretty much never do - I have very little respect for parsley), but what I made was pretty fabulous. Though I did overdo it a bit on the salt - the bacon and sausage are pretty salty on their own, so really, easy does it. But this is a fantastic, simple meal, and a pretty damn wonderful way to celebrate the first snowfall (yay! snow!).

Coddle

1 polish sausage

3 strips bacon

2 small onions

8 baby potatoes

salt, pepper

Chop the bacon and sausage into small bits. Blanch for 6 minutes in boiling water (so far as I know, blanch pretty much means cook... the point being, throw em in a pot, boil some water in a kettle and pour it over the meatses and cook for 6 minutes). Meanwhile, chop the onions and potatoes into bite-size chunks. When the 6 minutes are up, drain the water from the blanching, throw in the potatoes and onions, add salt (this might not even be necessary. In any case, you definitely don't need much of it.) and pepper and cold water. Laverty says to just barely cover it in cold water and simmer for 45 minutes, and that the potatoes ought to be mushy, and the result should be more potage than stew. I covered 'em in water and then added maybe a cup or so more for good measure and cooked it at high heat for maybe half an hour? You've gotta be careful towards the end that it doesn't burn. Basically, after half an hour, listen to the pot sing - when it starts to hiss a bit, you're almost out of water, and the food is ready.